


The Story of Knowledge Acquired Too Late

by Cunien



Category: Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Babies, Family, Fatherhood, Gen, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1656788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cunien/pseuds/Cunien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Athos has never thought of himself as a man who was naturally inclined towards fatherhood. He had hoped, for a shining bright year, that the future could be one where the long corridors of his house echoed with running footsteps and the laughter of children, dark haired like their mother, their eyes a wide forget-me-not blue. Perhaps he hoped for the bone-limbed weary content at the end of the day, to watch a child sleeping and warm and safe and <em>his</em>."</p><p>Athos watches the young Louis XIV and begins to realise the sacrifice that he and his brothers have made, the choices they've made, the life they can never have.</p><p>** This came out of nowhere about ten minutes ago when I should be getting ready for work, for which I am now late. I don't even know where this came from. I am quite broody. Men with babies are hot? Something like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Story of Knowledge Acquired Too Late

Aramis is being remarkably restrained, Athos thinks, as he watches the other man, tentative and gentle. The late spring morning is unexpectedly warm and bright, a breeze just enough to ruffle the Musketeer’s hair and Athos is struck by how young Aramis looks, with his hat at his feet and his blue cloak spread across the palace lawn. 

Anne lies propped against the pile of silken cushions beneath the shady tent, heavy-lidded and smiling. It’s common knowledge at court that the Queen is taking more than a customary interest in the upbringing of the child she has waited so long for, not content to leave the baby to wet nurses and staff - but it’s plain also in the tired lines about her eyes that even a Queen can suffer from the sleepless nights and constant demands of being a mother to the people of France and a year old baby, both.

Athos rolls his shoulders, allows himself to revel in the feeling - the King himself had asked for them by name, to guard the Queen and his young son in the absence of both himself and the Cardinal, at the beginning of a two-week trip to Lyon. There are no prying eyes, there is no one to suspect and they have every reason to be here, _Aramis_ has every reason.

He had been cautious at first, not wanting to intrude - over a year of building barricades strong enough to hold back the strength of feeling for the wellbeing of this particular baby has clearly made him wary as a child himself. But the clear warm light in Aramis’ eyes is plain to see, and it’s a joy the likes of which, Athos realises with a curious flutter of sadness in the pit of his belly, he himself has never felt, and probably never will.

Athos has never thought of himself as a man who was naturally inclined towards fatherhood. He had hoped, for a shining bright year, that the future could be one where the long corridors of his house echoed with running footsteps and the laughter of children, dark haired like their mother, their eyes a wide forget-me-not blue. Perhaps he hoped for the bone-limbed weary content at the end of the day, to watch a child sleeping and warm and safe and _his_.

But it is not something that he has cared to think about, a part of a past that is lost to him, and the grief of that was always too fresh and all-encompassing to dwell on the particulars of a life that was snatched away.

He wonders if his brothers have considered the life they lead, and how very unsuited to a family it might be. D’Artagnan is so young, after all. Perhaps he has not thought about what it would be like to have children, but has he considered what it is to not, to have that particular door closed forever?

Aramis he knows has thought of it, that it was partly the loss of a child and wife that never was that lead him stumbling into the ranks of the Musketeers. Athos had witnessed the grief on the other man’s face the night after the Queen’s pregnancy was announced, a mourning for a life that he could not have. He had held his friend shaking all through the long night as, across the city, Anne screamed and shuddered her way through a difficult labour.

Porthos he is not so sure of, but the eagerness of the big Musketeer to abandon his discreet distance and sit on the grass with the young Louis belies his soldierly cool. Arranging wooden blocks and soldiers, his big booming laugh is easy and warms the child into wide answering smiles. When the boy crawls over to a low table and tries to pull himself upright on pudgy little legs, almost pulling the whole thing down on his head, Porthos is quick to scoop him up and bring him back to the circle of toys, the little carpet of blue Musketeer cloaks spread out underneath them. He handles the baby with an ease and familiarity that reminds Athos that Porthos grew up on the streets, surrounded by children of all ages, an improvised family. He does not touch the child as if he were the future King of France, but a baby, just as precious and loved.

Athos has always found the Queen beautiful, but beautiful as a star is, distant and far above him. But now, sleepy and dappled with sunlight, the slender lines of her face softened with the curve of motherhood, she looks like nothing less than the Madonna herself. Athos swallows heavily against the need and the want and the sadness, welling up inside him with a strength he could never have anticipated. The desire to go to her, to lay his head down in her lap with her fingers splayed through his hair and the smell of milk and comfort and a child that can never be his is so strong he finds himself swaying forwards on his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> “Much of life, fatherhood included, is the story of knowledge acquired too late: if only I’d known then what I know now, how much smarter, abler, stronger, I would have been. But nothing really prepares you for kids, for the swells of emotion that roll through your chest like the rumble of boulders tumbling downhill, nor for the all-enveloping labor of it, the sheer mulish endurance you need for the six or seven hundred discrete tasks that have to be done each and every day. Such a small person! Not much bigger than a loaf of bread at first, yet it takes so much to keep the whole enterprise going. Logistics, skills, materiel; the only way we really learn is by figuring it out as we go along, and even then it changes on us every day, so we’re always improvising, which is a fancy way of saying that we’re doing things we technically don’t know how to do.” - Ben Fountain


End file.
